584: Traditional Media Is Dying – Why Building An Audience Matters More than Ever

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Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. this episode, Tony and I dive into why traditional media is collapsing and why it’s great news for content creators. If you’ve ever thought about starting a podcast, YouTube channel or newsletter, now is the time to build your own platform and own your audience. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com.

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and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business

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entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year,

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We also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:47
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about something surprising as I was just kind of browsing the web the other day and how badly traditional media is hurting and how much there is of an opportunity now for just individual content creators to get a lot of attention. Yeah, I mean, what were you just telling me that…

02:12
The regular TV doesn’t get any viewers anymore or network TV. article is dated just last week and MSNBC primetime only had 118,000 viewers age 25 to 54. But what is the viewership like 65 plus? I feel like it’s probably like five million. I don’t know. I think it’s the rest of it because they get like a million total viewers. OK, yeah.

02:39
And yes, I believe it is all people over the age of 54. Yeah. So everybody under 55 has sort of ditched traditional media. Which is I was just looking at that number and I was shocked because I have a whole bunch of YouTube videos that get more than that. You know what saying? No, that’s you know, it’s interesting. And we we try to avoid talking about politics here on the podcast. But I do think that that was something very smart that the Trump

03:08
team did for the election as a, he did the traditional media route, right? He did all that. But what he also did was he hit up all of those podcasters, right? Joe Rogan, Theo Von, all those guys who have massive audiences and he put himself out there in the non-traditional media. And I do think that helped his brand, right? Like him or hate him, it’s just a media strategy. And I think

03:35
the more any brand starts realizing that there’s been this like fundamental shift, the quicker you’re gonna be able to recover probably what you’ve been losing from that. Yeah, you know, it’s funny because I have conversations with my mom all the time and she just religiously leaves MSNBC on like all day long. Yes. So I and you know, we’re not gonna get political, but I do chat with my mom all the time. But I was just surprised at how low the numbers were.

04:03
I’m not only because, well partly because I live in a house with millennials and Gen Zers, right? And then I guess I do I have one Gen Alpha? I don’t know. She’s 15. So is she, I don’t know what the cutoffs are. But just watching the way my kids 30 and under consume media and all their friends, it’s just so completely different than how I consume media.

04:32
but also like how I think a lot of people who are in the 50, know, the older generation, right? There is such a huge shift, a split, right? A split between like one world and another world. And I think if you are a brand or a business, no matter how big or small, if you don’t start getting on the, you know, 55 and below train, as far as how you’re gonna reach people, you’re gonna lose out and you’re gonna waste your dollars, right? That’s the other thing.

04:57
It’s not just about not being able to reach people. You’re going to waste money on how you spent, know, on what you spend. Here’s what I just don’t get. Like I can get one hundred and eighteen thousand viewers on one YouTube video and I just have a camera. Right. But then these studios, they have a lot of they’re paying all these people, newscasters, they have a lot of money. Right. So I don’t see how it’s sustainable. Well, so I don’t think it is.

05:25
And have you noticed this is the other reason why I noticed the shift is whenever TikTok went to longer video content on on their, you know, being able to put more than like 60 seconds on TikTok and then it went to three and then it went to 10. I noticed that all of the news networks were basically publishing on TikTok, right? Like they were putting full news segments on TikTok every single day. Like they clearly have a full time team working.

05:54
that angle, right? Because they’ve realized that that’s where people are consuming their content. In fact, we just had another plane incident this week. And I don’t know if you saw in the news. I did. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t ever turn on the TV. But what I have found is when I see or hear a piece of content news.

06:16
Normally like my old self would have been like, oh, let me pull up cnn.com or foxnews.com or let me pull up like a news channel to see like what the reporting is. Heck no, I went to TikTok and searched Delta flight, right? because I knew and here’s what’s funny is you get all these like random people who are like posting, right? But all of the news outlets are also publishing on TikTok all of the information. And I feel like with TikTok you get the information even faster.

06:42
And I think that’s what society has realized is like the one everyone wants everything immediately, right? They don’t want to wait for anything. They don’t want to wait for production. They don’t want to wait for any of that. And because of that, like these channels can just set up on TikTok and go very quickly with the information. And I think that’s where people are consuming it. Yeah. So there’s a reason why I brought this all up. The other thing, here’s just another step before we get into the rest of it. Eighty three percent of Gen Z ears watch podcasts on video.

07:12
Yes. And I just read another article where these are all kind of recent articles, although, you know, if you’ve been in the community, people have been chattering about this for a long time. But YouTube basically has started dominating podcasting as a result of it. know, me, we just did this episode on podcasting, which I don’t know if I published actually just yet, but I’d been down on podcasting for a long time. Yes. Like I have been putting I’ve been deemphasizing my podcast over the years.

07:42
because just the growth trajectory is just so slow, mainly because Apple has done a horrible job of promoting podcasts. And Spotify is a little better, but it’s still not that great. Also, the search feature stinks. there’s just, yeah, there’s a lot of negatives with Apple, for sure. Yeah. But so that’s why I’ve been de-emphasizing it. In fact, you know, as soon as I was done with the book, I was burnt out on podcasting because I did so much promotion through it and whatnot.

08:12
But then now that I’ve read all these statistics and how everyone has a video podcast and I just didn’t realize the consumption of it, I’m back on the podcasting bandwagon. In fact, so we’re gonna turn My Wife Quit Her Job into a video podcast to be launched pretty soon. And then I just upgraded to 4K. And know people listening to this are like, oh my God, you should have upgraded to 4K a long time ago. Or we don’t wanna see you in 4K, one of the two.

08:41
Well, the thing is, I’ve been doing fine with my old camera, right? So I didn’t really see the point. But I thought it was time. So just since we’re turning this into a video podcast, does that mean that I get to buy a couch for my office and I can sit on my couch and with a blanket like all these podcasters do and with my cup of tea and talk? Or we’re not doing that? You could.

09:09
I don’t know. My background isn’t all that great, but I don’t think it really matters. So what’s so interesting. So I’m actually curious how the My Wife Quit Her Job YouTube podcast, I don’t know the correct way to term it, name it. Like when you have a guest on or if I’m on with you, which I know I’m on once a week and then I know you still have guests. Yeah. How will it be when it’s just you? how? Because to me, when I see video podcasts, which that’s

09:37
Primarily how, unless I’m in the car, I consume podcasts usually on YouTube. It’s always two people talking, sometimes three. There’s always this group factor, which I do think makes the video more interesting because you see reactions, you see there’s a back and forth. I’m curious. I don’t actually think I’ve ever seen a single person podcast video. It’s because I’m not looking. I’m not doing solo episodes on my wife, CritterJaw podcast. Not doing any?

10:06
Well, no, because the solo episodes are YouTube videos that go on the main channel. Oh, so those will those won’t be with a microphone in front of you and they won’t be set up like that. That’s correct. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I was curious about, because I just haven’t seen that. So I wonder how I think one of the reasons why it works on video is because there’s always two people or more. Actually, the way I’ve been doing it now is if I have a good hit on YouTube, it actually goes on the podcast. OK. But I record a separate intro for it.

10:36
and then another lead in. then I, there’s this process where I use AI software to just make it so that the, you know, the, you know how the environment is different on YouTube versus this mic. So I have this AI thing go and make it sound reasonably similar. Okay. And then I posted on the podcast. So, cause you know, I mean, I’m going to be straight up with everyone listening. Like the podcast has not grown that much over the years. And I think I was just late.

11:04
to this YouTube thing because it’s a lot of work actually to edit a YouTube podcast, right? We’ve, so, I mean, you’re late. We’ve talked about doing this for like two years. So we knew it was coming. wasn’t like you were late. You were just a late adopter of it, I think. I think I’m always a late adopter to everything, to be honest with you. So right now I’m at, we’re at different stages of life, I feel like. Right now, like I…

11:33
need to be there for my teenagers, especially right now when they’re applying to colleges and whatnot. So I’ve dialed a lot of things back as of late, whereas I think you’re the opposite. Your kids are pretty much adults now for the most part. I still have one, but yeah. Yeah. And so you’re more gung-ho about everything. So I needed to wait for that moment where there was an easy, automated way of doing it.

11:57
And just recently I found this software that makes editing podcasts a lot easier, pretty much automated, almost automated, should say. 80%. about it. Let’s talk. Cause I know people are going to ask, so we got to talk about it. Yeah. So it’s basically this plugin called autopod that hooks onto Adobe premiere. Okay. And it basically does all of the jump cuts. Okay. Like with the speakers and it eliminates dead, dead space too, which is like.

12:25
Probably 80, 75, 80 % of the editing of a podcast episode, right? What makes these so difficult is that podcast episodes are long. Ours are about 40 to 50 minutes. I think about how long it takes to edit a YouTube video right now. It’s probably like three hours for a 10 minute video. If we were to edit the same level as a regular YouTube video for a podcast, that would take days, which isn’t feasible.

12:54
I think the most important part is to just get it up on there. And I’ve been watching a lot of video podcasts lately. They’re not doing anything fancy. Really, they’re just panning the camera back and forth. Right? And doing a little bit of zoom action occasionally. Yeah. That’s it. So how much does this tool cost? It is, I believe, $30 a month. OK, so you have to have Adobe Premiere. You have to have Adobe Premiere license, too. Yeah. Which? And that costs whatever it costs. Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t.

13:24
Are you still using your 2009 Adobe? No, you have to use the latest. Okay. That’s the other caveat there. Yeah, let’s be honest about the pricing for people. Come on. Yeah, no, it ends up being… I can’t remember how much Adobe… I mean, everyone pays different for Adobe, but let’s just it all in like 80 bucks. But if the plugin gets you 80 % of the way there with…

13:53
removing the dead space, cuts, things like that. That’s a huge time savings because if your podcast is 40 minutes, and what did you say, 10 minutes per minute of video to edit is about It’s about three hours for 10 minutes for my editor who’s doing all the captions and everything too. We’re talking that one podcast could take 10 hours. Oh, easily. More than that.

14:18
So to take 80 % of that off and then maybe now it’s only going to take you two hours, that’s a pretty big savings. It’s like that’s worth the $30 a month for sure. Yeah. So all this is just conjecture right now because we literally just got the thing working. Yes. Two days ago. And so we’re working on just like the first episode right now. It’s not conjecture, though, because we we already know it works. You waited long enough. So now we know that people are doing it and they’re successful. We’re talking about the time to edit.

14:47
Oh, time to edit. I thought you were going conjecture. Yeah. Because the tool, like we literally just got out of working a couple of days ago. Yeah. When I texted you about it. Oh, gotcha. OK. Yeah. I see what you’re saying. So, yeah, OK. So that’s that’s a plus. I think the other plus about video podcasting is that your watch time is going to be longer. Yes. Because even if your podcast is 30 minutes.

15:10
Chances are people are probably having it on in the background listening, right? They’re probably doing other things. I don’t think many people just sit in front of their computer like a TV and watch a podcast. I feel like it’s on, they’re watching it sort of, but they’re also doing other things. So you’re gonna get those watch hours up pretty significantly just from the fact that people will probably listen all the way through or at least 50 % unless your podcast is really boring.

15:40
So what are the tricks are we gonna employ to keep people listening? I have no idea. Let’s just go in baby steps. Baby steps is to get it up there. Yeah. And the problem is, like, you know, I’m trying to take away things off my plate, but I just added a couple things on. One of the other reasons why I bought my 4K camera is because I’m going to be filming videos for Bumblebee. I already have six scripts and I bought a green screen. I had to actually buy a whole bunch of new equipment because I got

16:08
up to 4K, like my SD card didn’t work anymore. My computer can’t read the higher SD card speeds. whole bunch of stuff I just bought like relatively recently. It all arrived yesterday. Okay. We should have done an unboxing. What are you talking about? I mean, it’s not that exciting. The camera looks the same. It’s just, I don’t know. I feel like for people listening, they’re like, Oh my God, Steve, you’re just jumping on the 4K bandwagon. I don’t do things unless I feel it’s necessary. Yes, that’s true.

16:37
I mean, I’ve gotten to 400 and I don’t know how many 400,000 subscribers. I don’t know how many I have right this second with just 1080p, right? Yeah. On the belief that video quality isn’t as important as audio quality, which I still believe is true. Right. So now here’s my next question. So are you going to use the 4K camera to record our podcast? No, unless you buy a 4K camera. Well, that’s what I’m saying. If you’re going do that, then I got it because I’m just using my Logitech webcam.

17:07
I think 1080p is good enough. And ironically, right now, we haven’t switched over, I don’t think. So all of our old episodes are not going to, like the quality isn’t good. I don’t think people will notice, to be honest with you. Unless they’re watching on a gigantic screen TV. I don’t think people are to notice. they don’t. That’s a terrible But yes, we are going to definitely move this to 1080p. I don’t think we can do 4K because.

17:34
At least not yet. I don’t know if our plan allows it yet, but I don’t think it’s that important, to be honest with you. Yeah, I don’t either. Especially because we don’t have a backdrop or anything. This isn’t like a… We’re not in a living room. Yeah. Actually, I did a whole bunch of research also on the editing of it because the file sizes are so much larger. Yeah. But my camera has a feature. And again, people listen to this probably like, oh my God, this has been around forever. But the camera will record two streams at the same time, one at 4K and one at a very reduced quality with the same file name.

18:03
So you edit the one that’s lower quality and then you just splice in the one that’s higher quality at the end. Cause it’s identical. Okay. It’s interesting. So the editing is not a problem either. Anyway, so that’s what’s been going on. And then I, I just been reading all these stats on, you know, I used to want to be on TV so bad when I was younger. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

18:31
And whenever I did get on TV, which I did for the book and whatnot, I was always really excited. But now I’m not that excited anymore about TV because I just didn’t realize how low the viewership is. It’s ridiculously low. So what’s so interesting about this is I think when we all started out as bloggers, right, we all like getting on the news or getting featured in some, you know, usually it was like print magazines, right? Like that was such a big deal. And I remember I got on several news shows. I did Clark Howard and like my website.

19:01
crashed every time I even though we like tried to make sure it wouldn’t crash they crashed But nowadays I feel like you could probably get on any news show and you your website would handle it just fine However, I think if you got on someone’s YouTube right or you did like I think it’s completely reversed now It’s more about getting on someone who has a huge following like I think about I think about we talked about AJ a lot lately, but you know, he’s

19:30
he’s the bring the boom and they you know they built a big following but then he partnered with Mr Beast. So I can only imagine like when you partner with Mr Beach who is the largest influencer in the world right like he has the biggest following like what is that doing right to your channels you’re gonna see a boost because as soon as he did Mr Beast I saw him get all these other opportunities like he was at the Super Bowl he was at the World Series like he was doing all these things and so

19:57
Before it was like, if I can just get on, I remember I got on ABC Nightly News and I was so excited. It was like a decent segment and it did, it boosted, I got great boost from it, right? But today I feel like, like that would never occur to me to get on ABC Nightly News. I would much rather get on Jamerrill’s YouTube channel, right? Her large family cooking or do a guest, did Grant Cardone. Didn’t he do a, like a spinoff piece about you, about your millennial money thing? Oh, you’re talking about Graham Stephan. Graham Stephan, yes. Why did I take Grant Cardone?

20:26
Graham Stephan did the spinoff piece for you. Like to me, that’s a bigger win than getting on TV at this point.

20:37
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21:06
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21:17
I mean, totally. mean, we’re talking about one hundred and twenty thousand people, right? Right. Versus. One hundred and twenty thousand people. And probably most of those are forty five and above, so they don’t know how to punch in the URL. Exactly. And meanwhile, like Mr. Beast, posts a video that gets tens of millions of views. Right. Right. It’s not even a contest. Yeah, it’s just it’s crazy to me how if it’s not been quick, but it feels quick. I mean, here’s the other article I read, and this is

21:45
This one was late 2024, so it’s slightly older, but all the big media outlets are actually trying to partner with the individual influencers now and not the other way around. I feel like they need us now as opposed to the other way around. The power has shifted. Go content creators. This is all to say that I think you need to be creating content today. No matter what type of business that you run. This is why I’m doing that Bumblebee Linens YouTube.

22:15
kicking and screaming. just needs to be done, finally. I’ve been dragging about, how long I’ve been talking about it, two years? It’s been longer than that. I feel like I do. think you’ve been seriously talking about it for two years, but we’ve been talking about this for significantly longer. But then that leads me to this question, right? If you’re a brand, big or small, right? Maybe you’re just starting an e-commerce store. That seems overwhelming.

22:43
It seemed hard enough to get on traditional media, right? Like have the Today Show feature your you had the Today Show feature your hankies at some point, your linens. You know, that always seemed really overwhelming. Like how do I get a spot on there? How do I get on Rachel Ray? Or how do I get on, you know, whatever the talk show was at the time? That was a big deal. But you kind of knew if you got a publicist and you’re willing to pay to play, you could usually get, know, you could get yourself. And once you got the first one, you get, know, you get subsequent deals usually with with traditional media.

23:13
So my question is, now that the game has completely changed, how does a brand like Bumblebee hack the system? How do you figure out how to become something that the content people want to consume? I mean, that’s the challenging part. And let me just first say this. If you’re an e-commerce store, you don’t need content to hit seven figures. Practically everyone I know, I would say 90 %

23:41
they just can hit that point just on ads alone. It’s if you want more effortless sales, where you’re not paying for organic sales, that’s where content has always been the play. And when we started Bumblebee back in 2007, can you believe it’s been 18 years now? That’s crazy. It was all based on SEO and blogging. We put out content and that’s what attracted people to the store. But now that blogging is, I don’t want to say dead,

24:10
but it’s not really where the Gen Z-ers are consuming content. The older generation is still consuming content there, which fortunately Bumblebee Linens skews older. if you want the Gen Z-ers and the younger folk, you’re going to need to start creating content to get organic traffic in the places that they’re consuming content, which is right now short form video and YouTube.

24:36
I lost track of your question. I went on this tangent. It was the bumblebee linen strategy, right? Yeah. how is specifically Bumblebee going to do that? So this is just something that I’ve learned over the years running my YouTube channel is that people just like stories. Like that’s really the secret of content telling stories. So my idea for Bumblebee, and this has actually been kind of hard to execute.

25:04
Just because I’ve had to comb through tons of testimonials and whatever but I’m gonna just tell the stories of my customers and we just happen to be in a good niche where people are getting married so there’s always some sort of love story behind it and In my mind since I haven’t published anything yet in my mind. I have this vision of like telling these love stories We’ll see how it by Steve. We’ll see how it gets executed right where I’m not really mentioning I mean I’ll mention the product

25:33
but really it’s just the personalization of the product that I’m already focusing on and then the story behind the personalization. Yeah, so that’s, guess, my other question because I see this a lot with e-commerce stores. You are not the face of Bumblebee, right? And you don’t want to be. And there’s a lot of people out there who sell products where they should not be the face of the company.

26:01
So how do companies like that storytell and create this content when they are probably not able to talk about it in a really authentic way? Because they might be passionate about the business, they’re not into yo-yoing, right? Or whatever, they’re not, like think about Lars, right? He sold yo-yos, he sold gardens. He was actually kind of into gardening, I think. But if you are like, have a black thumb,

26:26
but you sell gardening supplies and tools? It doesn’t mean that you can’t create the content, but how do you do that if you or yourself are not a gardener? I mean, this isn’t an unusual problem. Let’s take Ezra, for example. He’s hired people to be spokespersons, because Ezra is not going to be there talking about new age beauty products. And arguably, I shouldn’t be the one doing these videos either. But my wife’s not going to do them.

26:55
She just, you know, she doesn’t want to to create videos, which is understandable. Not everyone wants to create these videos. So if I’m able to get any traction, that’s just going to show that a middle aged Chinese dude can can do this and which pretty much means that anyone can do it. Right. Yeah. So one idea that I actually came up with this morning. So we were I was actually interviewing somebody for a job and some of the job is in social media. But.

27:24
As I was interviewing them, I realized that they probably weren’t the person that needed to be creating the reels. So I was interviewing someone for a social media position and I realized during the interview that while they might be great creating the social media, like strategy and things like that, that they weren’t the person that would be like great on reels. They wouldn’t be the person creating the content. And as we were brainstorming after the interview of, okay, so this person is probably not the best person to do reels.

27:52
Like what do we do to fill that void, right? And the idea that we came up with was typically, if you create a product that, I don’t know, like even hankies for example, right? There are probably people out there who are creating video content about your products to use their affiliate links, right? Or to promote. And so the idea that we came up with was why don’t we hire somebody

28:18
who’s already making content about us using their affiliate link and pay them to create content that we can use on social media. So we would own the content. We would just pay them to be a content creator. And then it hit me that we know someone who’s been doing this for a long time and that’s Andy who creates Instagram and TikTok content for financial bloggers, right? So he basically has built a whole part of his business on being the personality or the face

28:47
for other brands and creating that content. So I think that is one thing that you can do and if you have people already creating content about your products or posting on social, making YouTube content, those would be the first people I ask. Because they’re probably happy, like usually those people do not want a full-time job. They’re just trying to do a side hustle. And so if you said, hey, yeah, you’re making some affiliate money from talking about our products, but what if you could make like an hourly, like what if we pay you $100 video or whatever it is, right, depending on what you’re asking them to do.

29:17
That’s one way you can get somebody to be the face of your brand without you having to do it. And their level of talent and ability might vary, right? So they might, you might need to give them a script. They might come up with a script. know Andy creates his own, he creates the scripts. He does like the whole thing, right? The scripting, the editing, the filming. Andy by the way? Do I know this person? Yes, marriage and money Andy. Oh, yeah, okay. So he creates content for Robert Farrington, college investor and a couple other people.

29:46
So like there are people out there where they maybe don’t want to be a brand themselves, but they are more than happy to do that video content for you. And this is not like you’re not paying thousands and thousands of dollars, especially if you’re just making reels and TikToks, right? We’re talking about short form content. And I would start with people that might be your customers already that are already making that content. And a lot of brands already have people making content organically for them.

30:14
Why not just approach them and say, hey, I want to hire you. All right. So here’s my future plan. I might consider using AI avatars. I showed you that one, OK, you fooled me with that. Right, because it’s so good. The avatars are so good now because I actually have a YouTube video coming out about this, but I started using these for ads where you can just get an AI avatar. These are actually humans.

30:41
that have gone through the whole process of deep fake, I guess. So basically you can put whatever words in So it’s really a human on the video. Well, mean, was created, the avatar was created by a real human. See, these are real people. It’s not like a completely human, artificially generated person. It’s actually a real person who’s probably gone through and trained the model to be them. And that’s why it works so much better than these completely artificially generated models.

31:11
Yeah. And so you can have it say whatever you want. And it is very effective. So. You know, right, it’s it’s pretty inexpensive, too. So in theory, you can just get a script, have an A.I. avatar, read it and then you do the rest of it like the B roll and whatnot for your. Do you know anybody who’s doing this right now? Well, I mean, if you look at it, there’s tons of A.I. on Tick Tock already.

31:41
Right, right. And I know for a fact that some of these YouTube ads I’ve been seeing, like there’s this one where this guy comes, I don’t know, you probably don’t get this ad because we have different content, but this guy comes on. says, I’m the only one who reveals all of my trades to the public stock trades. Okay. Okay. And the only reason I know that’s fake is because I got another video from a different guy, same company that said the exact same words.

32:09
So the guy’s just sitting on a couch, different avatar, different avatar. He’s just sitting on the couch, not moving and saying these things. Like if there’s lots of motion, that’s a little harder to, you know, but so it’s already happening. That makes me nervous. It’s already happening. I know what’s happening in the ad space big time. Yeah. Right. But whether you can create a full length YouTube video on it, it doesn’t need to be full length. It’s like a minute. You can easily get away with it. Yeah.

32:39
So someone like me who, like going out and paying someone to create a video sounds intimidating to me. Really? Someone who’s already creating content for you, Yeah. I don’t question the quality and whatnot, but just the act of getting down, talking to someone, negotiating a rate, and then having to approve. When I do a sponsored video, there’s a lot of back and forth, and that’s energy. And you know me. I don’t like that part.

33:09
about it. No, I know. Yeah. I’d rather just someone throwing the video, say, hey, just do whatever you want. You have creative direction and whatnot. Well, that’s why I think someone like Andy is such a good find for people is that if you can find someone that already is like very into your brand or aligned with your brand, maybe they’re already making content about it. I think Andy has a lot of creative freedom. I don’t think there’s a lot of back and forth. Right. I think it’s basically like we’re paying you per video. We want three a week. Have fun. Right.

33:36
I don’t know the exact specifics of their deal, obviously, but that’s what I assume it is based on just conversations that I’ve had and people that I know have done it with other people. It’s kind of like back when I hired all the writers. I hired my readers, right? I hired the people that were most aligned with my brand. And obviously, you know, came with some good and bad because, you know, initially some of the photos were terrible. Like I’ve paid to have photos retaken and things like that of stuff. So, you know, that’s not

34:05
necessarily always going to work out amazing, but it’s definitely the best way to find someone that aligns with your brand. And if you can get like one person that’s like your committed person to do it, there’s a lot less of that back and forth. Whereas I can generate five AI videos in like 30 minutes or so. Yeah. But will they work is my question. Well, if it’s good enough, then it will work. Right. Well, because I fooled you for a 30 second. What was it?

34:34
I can’t remember You fooled me that it wasn’t real, yes, but did you fool me to buy your brand? Those are two very different things. To me, one of the reasons why video is so powerful, and I’ll probably be eating my words. In one year, we will be playing this little clip in our video podcast of me completely being wrong. One of the reasons why video is so powerful is because you feel like you connect with the person. People adore Mr. Beast or they hate him.

35:02
I remember like a couple years ago all my nephew wanted for Christmas was Mr. Beef’s beast merch Right and I’m like so I you really want me to buy a sweatshirt from a tick to our youtuber like this is ridiculous Right, but it’s like so if mr. Beast was an AI generated thing Like would people connect with him on the same level? I don’t know. Well, that’s already taken place, right? You’ve seen those AI Instagram Like this article is pretty old but this AI Instagram person had millions of

35:32
millions of followers. I think this is happening in Japan. Of course. You’re old enough to remember this. Remember Max Headroom? Yes. He was the first AI-generated avatar. Everyone listening is like, who the hell is Max Headroom? It’s so true. It’s already happening. This isn’t new. I just wonder, will the level of connection be the same? That’s my question. Not does it work? It’ll work, but will you be able to drive the same type of engagement?

36:01
I have no idea. mean, it’s ultimately the words that are coming out of the mouth that someone has to generate that’s causing the connection, right? In a way. But part of it’s the… I actually… I think it’s crazy that you’re going to do this for Bumblebee a little bit. Like that you’re going to read love stories about people, right? It’s not a love story. It’s just like… I like hearing these, right? Like first thing that I usually ask someone is, how did you get together? Yes.

36:29
It’s just a story of how did you get together? Yes. But I think… It’s not like a romance novel. Her soft velvety flesh. I’ll sign up for it. I’ll watch it. Sign me up. what… Now I’m never going to get that out of my head. But I do think there will be something endearing about you telling the stories. Like, I think that there…

36:56
I think it’s crazy in a way, but I also think it’s endearing. I think people will connect with that. Like, oh, here’s this guy. He loves these stories. It’s only because I know you very personally that I think it’s funnier because you’re so matter of fact about so many things in your life. I’ve decided to get a 4K camera after 14 spreadsheets and deliberations.

37:22
Like that’s why I think I think there’s the angle to it that makes it fun and interesting Right if it’s just an AI avatar telling the story. I don’t think it’s as interesting. I think it’s more interesting with you But it could be that I have a bias because I know you right so there’s like all these factors that play in I’m worried about it because I’m Asian actually if I was and it’s hard for me to say this but you know right now there’s you know, we’re in a trade war and

37:52
Yeah, I’m just worried about like all the negative effects, but hey, something’s got to be done. I mean, you can put now you’ve been putting out YouTube content, though, for. Oh, did you know yesterday I meant to screenshot you yesterday was your YouTube anniversary. Oh, was it? Yeah. How did you know that? Because I got I got a Facebook note of memory. Hold on. I took a photo of it I meant to text you and then I got OK on this day five years ago. This is from yesterday.

38:19
I launched my YouTube channel today and to commemorate the occasion, I’m running a huge giveaway. See, you can see it. Oh, wow. OK. Yeah, there it is. Five years ago to the day. Yeah, yesterday, February 18th, 2020. So right before you launched, right before the pandemic during covid, right? Right before the 18th. So we didn’t know it was coming. Yep. So anyway, so I’m saying you’ve been doing this for five years as a Chinese guy. You’ve survived. That’s correct. But I’m not selling hankies either.

38:49
You’re selling dreams. people in the South. I’ll be interested. I’ll be interested to see. I think if you can make this work for Bumblebee, this is going to be a game changer for people in e-commerce for you to be able to teach how to do this. You can’t really. I don’t know. It’s going to be hard to teach this stuff. Everyone has their own thing. I’m not the only one creating content, obviously. There’s so many e-commerce brands creating content.

39:18
You just have to find your thing. Right. Like we talked about the I forgot the brand now, but they sell Katana blades. Yes. And their videos are just like a bunch of young kids, like chopping things up with a sword. Right. Yes. And that works. Yeah. I mean, it just totally depends on your brand and the type of people that you attract. But yes. But I think that the Katana people, right. Like it’s interesting to watch. mean, who doesn’t like watching a watermelon get chopped in half? Like that’s entertaining.

39:48
Eric from Beardbrand. That’s interesting content, right? All the guys on their page are hot and have gray beards. It’s like, okay, clearly there’s a reason why people are watching this. But for you to come on and be like, I’m a middle-aged Chinese guy that sells hankies, here’s how I had a content win. I think that’s the game changer for people. So it’s helping people that are like, I sell sprinkler parts or I sell doorknobs or you

40:17
these really mundane or like mostly uninteresting types of products, like how do you take those products and make really interesting content out of it? And so what I’m saying is if you can make it work for Bumblebee, I think it’s gonna inspire a lot of people to try it as well. I mean, in the back of my mind, I know this is gonna work. It’s just to what level is it gonna work and whether the vision that I have in my head will actually work because I have doubts on that.

40:46
Because I don’t want people just watching me like ideally my head is just a very teeny percentage of the video Yeah, which means I need imagery I need b-roll and fortunately, we’re just living in this age AI where I can actually have cartoon Photos of this person like I have no idea what these customers look like I literally have no idea what they look like I want to keep everything completely anonymous to in case I offend someone right, right

41:14
But I’ve already added to the autoresponder sequence, like tell me the story. And what I’m going to do actually is I’m going to send out these stories, if I’m happy with them, to actual customers, right? As just like a sample, like, hey, you know, here are just some love, you know, relationship stories from the people who’ve bought. And hopefully that’ll create some sort of, I guess, traction with the customers and make this, make them remember our story even more. Yeah. Right. Because we’re telling these stories and maybe they’ll want to come on. Yeah. You know, and submit their story. Yeah.

41:44
It’s fundamentally sound, I think the strategy. It’s all an execution play and whether I can pull it off or not, I’m not positive actually. So like these first set of videos are horrible, then I’m probably not going to publish them. But after a couple of iterations and whatnot, I’m sure we can find something. The hard part will be whether it can be low energy. What you’re like, what? I just think that in general, creating

42:13
video content is not low energy. Can it be streamlined? Yes. Can you create a process? Yes. Can you make it efficient? Sure. Is it ever going to be low energy? Probably not, because to me, content requires energy, especially video This is what I mean by that. I want to be able to just write the script, record my part, throw it over, and have the video ready. That’s what I mean by low energy.

42:39
I can’t be getting involved in creating the AI imagery and the editing and all that stuff. to get too far in the weeds, but is your VA going to create the AI imagery? So that’s the part that I need to figure out. It’s all work in progress. Well, we’ll see how it goes. Okay. But let’s end it talking a little, circling back to the video podcast. When is this going to be live, Steve? I have no idea.

43:07
I really have no idea, but it’s on the priority list now. Once it’s made my to-do list, it’s going to happen. Will people be able to watch the full podcast on YouTube? It’ll be the full podcast. Okay. It’ll be the full podcast. get to see how many times I roll my eyes at you, yawn, all that will now be public to the world.

43:29
You’ll notice that in the earlier episodes, Toni just comes in rolling out of bed practically, but now she’s going to start looking much better because it’s going to be a video podcast. I’m like, dang it. Because of this, actually, I’ve shifted all my recording to Wednesdays now. I’m about to record a laundry video right after this. A riveting video on laundry. That will be. There’s a lot of things to figure out still, but-

43:57
If you guys are listening to this, it’ll be very obvious when we launch, because we’re going to launch with a contest and a whole bunch of other things too.

44:05
Hope you enjoyed this episode. To think that some of my videos on YouTube get more views than primetime news is shocking to me. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 584. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.

44:35
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.